Thursday, July 03, 2008

Division in the Church of England

This article appeared July 1, 2008, in The Times, published in England. Apparently, the Church of England is in the midst of a division over right and wrong. Religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill writes:

More than 1,300 clergy, including 11 serving bishops, have written to the archbishops of Canterbury and York to say that they will defect from the Church of England if women are consecrated bishops. As the wider Anglican Communion fragments over homosexuality, England’s established Church is moving towards its own crisis with a crucial vote on women bishops this weekend.

Of the 1,333 clergy who signed the protest letter, 60 per cent are serving clergy. Among the retired bishops is the former Bishop of Chichester, the Right Rev Eric Kemp. Some women deacons have also joined the protest. The traditionalists write: “We will inevitably be asking whether we can, in conscience, continue to minister as bishops, priests and deacons in the Church of England . . . We do not write this in a spirit of making threats or throwing down gauntlets. Rather, we believe that the time has come to make our concerns plain, so that the possible consequences of a failure to make provision which allows us to flourish and to grow are clear.”

Churches of Christ are not the only ones to be facing the great crisis of conviction. It seems that these battles are everywhere present as the culture of the world changes.